DEMOLITION DERBY

 I've never believed in the adage that learning is a continuous process. According to cognitive experts, a human being learns 80% of everything he will ever learn by the age of five years. (In my case it took a couple of more years because I have always been a bit slow on the uptake, or, as my wife who always looks at the more positive side of things, says, up on the slow take.) The remaining 20% is useless drivel, the kind of balderdash you pick up on Republic TV and Times Now, which tends to negate Darwin's evolutionary process. And I have exemplary role models to prove my thesis that successful people stopped learning anything the moment they changed their diapers for a "katcha".

Take our own resident sage, the Prime Minister, who never learns from experience and keeps inflicting on us one surgical strike after another without the benefit of any anesthesia: demonetisation followed by the Lockdown, Article 370, NRC, CAA and now the Farmer's Bills. Or take his colleague the Railway Minister who has yet to learn that a foot is meant for walking and not for inserting in one's mouth: his epiphany that Einstein discovered gravity was swiftly followed by his declaration that high unemployment indicates growth in self employment. Barely had we recovered from this stupendiotic  (my word, not Mr. Shashi Tharoor's!) assertion than he informed Mr. Bezos that he could keep his billions because India (which is looking at a 15%  drop in GDP this year) didn't need his shekels. And now a certain glamour and dash has been added to my theory by none other than the redoubtable Ms Kangana Ranaut who has not learnt when to let a good thing be. Having equated Mumbai with POK, you would think she had made her point. You would be mistaken, because she then decided to widen her canvas, as it were, and proceeded to call another actress a "soft porn star"; to maintain a gender balance she then categorised all agitating farmers as terrorists. It appears that she has convinced herself that what India needs today is another Rani ki Jhansi, and that what she herself needs is a Rajya Sabha BJP ticket from Manali. I am informed her film MANIKARNICA is now being retitled as MANALIKARNICA, much to the discomfiture of the sitting BJP MP from Manali. 

But I am not one to stand on prestige, and therefor must confess that I was wrong- one can still learn something new, even at the age of 70, in our New Bharat. For in recent months I have been made aware of yawning gaps in my erudition, wide as the Depsang plains, through which you could drive a Ram Rath if not a Chinese armoured brigade. Some of these are worth sharing with the reader, especially those whose cognitive growth also hit a road block at the age of five.

I have discovered, for instance, that whereas to build is human, to demolish is divine. The urge to demolish is what drives our current civilisation. It began, I suspect, with the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 as an apt expression of our glorious culture, but has since then become the mainstay of good governance. We now demolish what we cannot resolve and hide our failures beneath mounds of rubble. Dozens of apartments in Ernakulam were ordered to be razed to the ground in 2019 by the eminently forgettable Justice Arun Mishra, who spent his spare time singing elegies to the Prime Minister and his bench time distributing relief to corporates. These poor middle class apartment owners were thrown on the streets overnight. Even though the buildings had every conceivable required approval, this law abiding judge found them in violation of environmental regulations. Perhaps they were, just like every second building in Shimla . So punish the guys who gave the permissions and the builder who was less than honest with his buyers. But why take on Big Government and Big Money, right? The height of these buildings, presumably, also obscured from the good judge's view the rape of the environment by the govt's own coal, hydro and highway projects in Chattisgarh, Arunachal and Uttarakhand, and so they escaped his attentions. Selective demolition is the name of this game.

But he established the principle that demolition, not development, lies at the heart of good governance. And so the Supreme Court proceeded last month to order the demolition of all "jhuggis" and jhopris" on Delhi's railway tracks, no doubt in furtherance of the promise of Sabka Saath Sabka Vinash. There was no concern felt for the 50000 who would be rendered homeless as a result, just as in slightly earlier times the same court ignored the tens of millions of migrants trudging back to their villages among a hail of police lathis and sprays of disinfectants. Mr. Kejriwal, smelling electoral blood, immediately announced that all the displaced would be rehabilitated. But no one took him seriously since he still has to rehabilitate Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav.

No one, however, can stop a bad idea whose time has come. The Uttar Pradesh govt., the pioneer of the Encounter school of justice, decided that convicting people it didn't approve of took up too much of its time and was anyway beyond the competence of its police. It was much more convenient to just demolish their houses. There was, of course, that little irritant of finding the law that permitted such a progressive initiative, but, as the Fuehrer famously said: I AM the law. And so the IPC has been replaced by the JCB, a much more efficient instrument for bringing about change, as the many accused of opposing the government are now finding out. It's amazing what a mere change of a few alphabets can do for good governance.

The JCB is a politically neutral and gender neutral machine, as the BMC (Bombay Municipal Corporation) soon realised. Confronted with our own home- made climate change disaster, Hurricane Kangana and her 200 km gusts of fulminations, the BMC decided to demolish her Pali Hill house: it literally left no stone unturned to convey its message to her. Kangana, who is the apple  (what else?) of Himachal's eye, was immediately designated as "Himachal ki beti" by the Himachal Chief Minister, and his BJP cadres have now expressed their intention to demolish, as a return favour, Priyanka Gandhi's house near Mashobra. Which has now got me seriously worried. My own house is quite close to Priyanka's and I once wrote an article praising her brother: that can put me on the death watch wait list if the demolition virus replaces the corona virus in Mashobra.

And so it was inevitable that, having demolished just about everything that made this country great, the government would sooner or later turn its baleful eye on Parliament. The Central Vista project is the apotheosis of this new spirit of reconstruction, by which an entire era of history and heritage will be demolished. The existing Parliament building- one of the most iconic and recognizable edifices in the world- will be put in mothballs, under a sarkari coat of pan masala. A new Parliament building will replace it. To me, this is just an ex post facto acceptance of reality. The present Parliament building is now only a hollow shell, it is no longer the sanctum of Nehru, Patel, Rajendra Prasad, Ambedkar, Minoo Masani, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Vajpayee and other stalwarts who made us proud, it is now the abode of pygmies. The values, traditions, wisdom, courtesy, resounding oratory and genuine Indianism which once imbued each stone and cranny of this building have long departed along with these great personalities and true sons of India. When the life blood and very soul of the structure has been drained away, of what use is the building itself? In fact, it is only appropriate that the mediocrity of today's politics be taken to another, new architectural mediocrity instead of tainting the grand old building. It deserves better than the execrable scenes that play out inside it everyday. Sometimes demolition can be a blessing, it can preserve the truth for all times and remind us, as nothing else can, of what we have lost. Every mound of rubble has a story to tell, and it's not pretty.

 

         LAW NEEDED TO COMPENSATE VICTIMS OF WRONGFUL ARRESTS.

 

Dr. Kafeel Khan, of the Gorakhpur tragedy fame a couple of years ago who tried to save infant lives by buying oxygen cylinders out of his own pocket and was jailed by the UP govt. for it, has been freed by the Allahabad High Court which found no evidence against him. He was kept in various prisons for eight months without legal justification. Dr. Khan, however, is one of the lucky ones.

This govt. has been in an overdrive this past year to lock up anyone who can think independently of its propaganda machinery, or express himself in opposition to its anchors and spokespersons- academists, activists, the rare journalist, students, NGOs. One of its main instruments in this pogrom is the deadly legacy bequeathed it by the Congress, the UAPA ( Unlawful Activities Prevention Act) now suitably amended by the BJP to fit its image. NCRB data shows that 3005 cases have been registered under UAPA between 2016 and 2018, more than 350 in UP alone. Tellingly, however, in 2016( the last year for which data is available) 22 cases out of 33 which were decided ended in acquittal: in other words, two out of three arrested were found not guilty. And this is only at the trial court stage; after the appeals process the convicted figure would come down even further. And this exposes the government’s game: the idea is not to convict since the charges are usually trumped up and without any evidence, the intention is to harass, teach “them” a lesson, intimidate and take them out of circulation for as long as possible.But in the process thousands of innocent persons would have been locked up for months and years without reason. Anjum Zamarud Habib was in prison for 5 years,  Mohammad Amir Khan for 14 years, the Akshardham temple blast accused for much longer before being exonerated of terrorism charges. That is why Kafeel Khan was lucky, and why this is as good an inflection point as any to consider the endemic problem of malicious prosecution and wrongful arrests in this country, and whether or not the state should provide reparation to these victims of deliberate state excesses.        The guarantee that no citizen shall be deprived of his personal liberty without reasonable evidence against him is the bedrock of human rights, and the corner stone of an equitable system of justice.  As the criminal justice system heads towards total collapse and the govt. compensates by legislating more and more draconian laws stipulating arrests without any inquiry and/ or no provision of bail, such detentions shall surely increase. It is time to address the issue rationally.

  Citizens in India are being confined illegally on a colossal scale, either in police lock-ups or in judicial custody. Our prison population is about 4.50 lakhs, of which 70% (  3.10 lakhs) are undertrials who have not yet been convicted of any offence. The majority of them are not likely to be convicted either. According to NCRB data  the national conviction rate for IPC offences is just 45%; in other words, of the 3.10 lakh undertrials in jail 55% or 1.65 lakhs will be found innocent for want of evidence ! A further 25% of them will get off on appeal. But they would have spent years behind bars, deprived of their liberty and natural rights, their future blighted by the stigma of imprisonment. Why were they arrested in the first place ? Why did the courts send them to judicial custody if there was no prima facie evidence against them ?

 The answer is nothing short of an indictment of our entire criminal justice system: callous apathy, venality and incompetence of the police, failure and lack of due diligence on the part of our lower courts , and complete indifference of the policy makers. To begin with, many of our laws themselves are defective to the point of being blood thirsty- laws relating to dowry deaths,  suicide, rape, domestic violence, atrocities on scheduled castes, sedition, terrorism are so crafted that the " accused" can be arrested straightaway without the need for any corroborating evidence. This is grist to the police mill which in any case is more interested in " closing" a case by arresting someone than in ensuring that actual justice is done by catching the real culprits . Quite often public/ political/ media pressure is so intense that an arrest-any arrest- is the only way to get them off their backs. Thereafter shoddy investigation, external influences, lengthy delays, witness intimidation, frequent transfers and lack of any accountability ensure that 65 of 100 cases will inevitably end in acquittal, either at the trial stage itself or in appeal(s). Meanwhile, of course, those arrested will languish in jail.

 The same bizarre process applies to convictions after trial. In the Akshardham Temple blast case of 2002 six accused were convicted by the trial court and High Court: three were sentenced to death and three others to imprisonment ranging from 10 years to life. All six were acquitted by the Supreme Court on 16th May 2014 . But by then their lives had been destroyed as they had spent the intervening ten years in jail. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of such cases playing out every year. Should the nation not compensate them for the miscarriage of justice even though no reparation could possibly bring back the years lost, the reputations tarnished, the families torn apart?

 There are many types of wrongful confinement: False Arrest ( detaining a person without lawful authority), Wrongful Arrest ( taking someone into custody without prima facie evidence), Wrongful Imprisonment ( confining someone without just cause or without using legal channels), and Wrongful Conviction ( imprisoning someone on grounds/ evidence subsequently found to be inadequate). The first three are blatant violations and transgressions of the law; only the last type is a consequence of a legal process, but it is nonetheless no solace to the victim. All four are rampant in India.

 The  genuine democracies have accepted that victims of a necessarily imperfect criminal justice system are entitled to reparation from the state, and have devised mechanisms for it. In the USA 29 states have legislated Wrongful Conviction Compensation statutes which provide compensation ranging from US$ 50,000 to US$100,000 for every year of wrongful imprisonment. A typical case is that of one Marty Tankleff who was wrongly convicted for the murder of his parents and had to spend 17 years in incarceration before he was acquitted in 2007. He was awarded compensation of US$ 3.4 million dollars . In the UK , Canada, New Zealand, Germany too systems exist for the state to be sued in such cases. It is next to impossible to do so in India because both, specific legislation or a general law  are missing. We have failed to enact a law on reparations even though India is a signatory to the International Covenant On Civil and Political Rights.

 The framework for having such a law exists, however. Articles 32 and 26 of the Constitution allow the Supreme Court and the High Courts, respectively, to pass orders and provide relief in such matters, and it is the constitutional right of a citizen to approach the courts. There is also a wealth of jurisprudence and case law to mandate that the state pay compensation for wrongful confinement. The relevant landmark judgments by the Supreme Court are in Bhim Singh vs State of Jammu and Kashmir, and in Rudul Sah vs State of Bihar ( 1983); in the latter case the SC laid down the legal responsibility of the State in no uncertain terms:

“ The State must repair the damage done by its officers to the petitioner’s rights. It may have recourse against its officers.”

Over the years both the Supreme Court and various High Courts( MP, Jharkhand, Kerala, Bihar, Assam, Madras) have also awarded compensation to petitioners in their writ jurisdiction, the most notable and recent one being the Rs. 13 million reparation paid to the ISRO scientist Nambi Narayan by the Kerala govt. for arresting and hounding him for 26 years on false spying charges.

But this sporadic, discretionary, pick and choose approach is certainly not adequate. Let us not forget that most of the undertrials and victims of police high handedness come from the weakest sections of society ( economically and socially) and do not have the resources to file writ petitions and engage expensive lawyers. Nor do they have the social eminence of a Nambi Narayan to motivate the media to take up their case. There should be a simple, specific legislation that can be accessed at the level of a district court or even a statutory authority like the District Magistrate. The law should, among other aspects, lay down the compensation to be paid for both pecuniary and non pecuniary damage caused to the petitioner by his illegal confinement, and the scale of reparation. There should also be a provision for recovery of the amount from the salaries of the officials involved. This is necessary to curb the growing enthusiasm of the police to carry out any illegal order of their political bosses, or even to indulge their own brutish instincts.  

   Wrongful confinement of any type by any agency of the state is a violation of human rights, and when it occurs on the scale that it does in our country it amounts to a negation of an equitable justice system. The prevailing concept of " arrest first, gather evidence later" is abhorrent to the spirit of jurisprudence. One can understand the indifference of the government and the parliamentarians, but what is inexplicable is the silence of the judiciary and the bar. Is it because the former is equally guilty through its casual approach, and the latter because this infringement of fundamental rights is good for business? Whatever the reason may be, it is high time laws are put in place to compensate the victims of wrongful arrests/ convictions and to punish the perpetrators. At the least, this would have a salutary effect on the way our police conduct investigations and the judges examine evidence. The people have voluntarily given the state enormous power over their lives in order to live in a just and lawful society; when the state errs in the exercise of this power it must offer reparation to its victims. Not doing so would be breaking a covenant that is the bedrock of a democracy.

 Here is a PIL crying out for suo moto attention of the Supreme Court, one of far more consequence for the common citizen than a suo moto contempt petition.

 

 

 

ACTS OF GOD AND FOLLIES OF MAN.

   . 

A "legal fiction" is  an idea or a concept, which doesn't actually exist in fact, but is mandated to exist by law or convention or belief for the larger good of mankind. Some important examples of legal fiction are: rule of law, justice, human rights, democracy, social equality. They don't actually exist in the real world but we are led to believe that they do, for they are essential for an orderly, stable society: without them we would descend into chaos. In recent days in India even the Constitution appears to be a legal fiction. God too is a legal fiction. HE doesn't exist (at least not to the satisfaction of science) but it is important to believe that HE does, for a pious and stable society. But this is one fiction that the BJP-RSS combine has exploited to the hilt and used to come to power like no other political outfit has done before or after. The Ram Mandir movement and the construction of the temple in Ayodhya is the best example of this. (This was in fact an instance where two legal fictions coalesced to serve the BJP's purpose- God and Justice, the latter in the form of the inexplicable Supreme Court judgment on the matter which laid low the hopes of one community but raised a certain judge to Parliamentary heights).

But fiction is something the ruling party is comfortable with, since practically all its vaunted achievements and promises are nothing but fiction, if not fantasy: unprecedented economic growth, a five trillion dollar economy, eradicating the pandemic in 21 days, making India a Vishwaguru, leading the world in climate change reforms, providing ten million new jobs a year, eradicating black money, uniting the nation, revolutionising the tax structure with Goods and Services Tax (GST). There are more such creative chimeras, but these should do to illustrate my point, which is that our present dispensation has erased the distinction between fact and fiction. Including the distinction between its own actions and the actions of God. The official confirmation of this was the recent statement of our Finance Minister that our horrendous economic slump of -23.9% was "an Act of God" and that therefore the Centre was not bound to pay the GST dues to the states. Actually, the Act of God too is a legal fiction!

Now, Ms Sitharaman is a deeply religious person: she doesn't eat onions, her quotations from the ancient classics are far more authentic than her budget figures, and she believes that the mythical Saraswati river is as real as the "green shoots" of the economy- the only problem being that only she can see these chimeras, no one else. So what are we to make of this blasphemy from a devout lady, who otherwise has very little in common with that other great believer, Mr. Maradona of the "hand of God" fame. But Maradona at least had won his match, whereas our Finance Minister seems to be losing hers.

Her Delphic statement has befuddled political commentators and economists, who in any case are not known for their clarity of thinking. Even rampaging TV anchors have taken their eyes off Rhea Chakravarty and Kangana Ranaut (a difficult feat, I must admit) to decipher this observation. Does it mean that Mr. Modi has been finally elevated to Godhood, since it is only thy hand, Great Anarch, that can conduct this orchestra of despair and perdition? Or is it a final admission of sovereign fraud, the state joining the ranks of Mallya and Nirav Modi, to deny us what is rightfully ours?

Ms Sitharaman also did not explain the obvious paradox in her claim about this act of God: how is it that a Hindu God inflicted such punishment on His own peoples, or conversely, why is a Hindu nation blaming its own God? This quandary brings to mind that immortal verse by Ogden Nash:

" How odd of God

  To choose the Jews,

  But odder still are those who choose 

  A Jewish God and spurn the Jews!"

A similar confusion appears to prevail here, but maybe it can still be clarified in the forthcoming session of Parliament. I am aware that we no longer have the Question hour since there are no answers left, but perhaps the matter can be taken up suo moto in the manner of contempt cases. After all, we now have a retired (or is it retreaded?) Ranjan Gogoi to advise the government: Show me the God and I'll show you the rule.

For it is apparent to anyone who does not swear by banana republic channels that Ms Sitharaman and her capo are fast losing the plot, not by acts of God, but by Acts of Parliament and acts of sheer arrogance: the CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act), the NRC (National Register of Citizens), the NIA (National Investigative Agency), GST, UAPA (unlawful Activities Prevention Act), demonetisation, the lockdowns, the Rs. 20000 crore for the Central Vista project, the enforced migrant exodus, the Rs. 2000 crore budget just announced for the 2021 Kumbh Mela, the Bullet train which is already a spent bullet- all while the bottom has been knocked out of our economy, the dragon is comfortably curled up on our northern borders, and we will be celebrating this Diwali by becoming the global number one in the "Ease Of Getting Infected" chart, all set to overtake the USA in the Corona hit parade.

Economists have had to invent a new revival diagram for us, we are told that the Indian economy is likely to have a K shaped curve for its recovery, the two diverging prongs from the perpendicular indicative of the massive inequality that will result. This K shaped curve will in future times be known as the Kedarnath curve, where the Supreme leader, meditating in a Himalayan cave, will levitate to transcendental heights along with his "jhola" and a few A-lister corporate buddies, while the suckers like you and me (the lower prong in the K)) will plummet to the depths of bankruptcy and ruin. This, in essence, is the K curve; to misquote Churchill: never have so many given away so much to so few.

But elections still have to be won. The time for taking credit is over, it's now time to pass the buck. The gods can be appeased later, perhaps when the Ram mandir is consecrated or Kashi and Mathura brought into the fold, but right now it's blame game time. The banking system is about to collapse with a possible further moratorium on Rs. 40 lakh crores of outstanding loans, the states may start retrenching employees and cutting back on pensions and salaries, 23 million salaried jobs have already been lost. Elections are due in Bihar and Bengal and somebody has to carry the can.

And so the government and the BJP are upping the blame game ante. They had begun by blaming the Mughals, then the British, graduated to the Gandhis (the unoffending poor Mahatma included), moved on to Manmohan Singh and finally settled on Jawaharlal Nehru. But there is only so much earth you can pile on to a person who has been dead now for half a century, and with the mess piling up faster than you can say "Holy shit!" some other scapegoat was needed. What better than a celestial scapegoat cloaked in unchallengeable divinity, to whom no Question Hour applies, a legal fiction which cannot be questioned on pain of a jail term?- yes, sir, blame it all on acts of God. And when the good times (and the GDP growth) return, conflate that God with one individual, redact the earlier statement, and roar  "Hail to the Leader!" But what if the good times are in no hurry to return? Who does one blame then? Well, there's always the Holy Ghost.

ONCE UPON A TIME THERE USED TO BE NEWS

   I've looked up the figures and they are very impressive. As on 31.3.2018 India had 100,000 publications registered with the Registrar of Newspapers, and these had a circulation of 240 million. There are 850 TV channels and 197 million idiot boxes on which to suffer them. 460 million Internet users, 17 million Twitter users as on July 2020 ( including obviously the three judges of the Supreme Court who were so scandalised by Mr. Bhushan's tweets), 303 million Facebook users and approximately 300 million Whatsapp accounts. These figures should ideally be representing an information eco system which should be churning out a Nobel Laureate every time Mr. Modi says  "Mitron" , not a rancid Tejeshwi Surya every time Mr. Amit Shah explains " Aap chronology samajhiye..."

  How is it then that, with such a wealth of information on tap, 37% of our voters still think that the "acche din" have arrived, or are just around the corner- first turn right after Ayodhya, take the sign which says " Kashi, Mathura, 2 judgments away"? Or that, as a recent opinion poll shows, 69% think that the Chinese have been given a befitting reply, even as twenty of our finest have been brutally killed by the said Chinese? Or that almost 50% are happy with the way the economy is going, which is down shit creek without a paddle? Or that almost a thousand "eminent" ( and unknown) lawyers approve of the conviction for contempt of the one legal activist who has perhaps done more to defend and champion the rights of the citizen than a dozen courts and Bar Associations put together?

   How is it that we believe without question a  Prime Minister ( the country's sole post graduate in  "Entire Political Science")who tells us that no Chinese were on the Indian side of the LAC even as a few hundreds of them were playing water polo on our side of Pangong Tso lake? Or various Ministers of the BJP recommending papad, cow dung, and group singing as sure-fire cures for Covid, the Railway Minister crediting Einstein with discovering gravity? How is it that almost 75% of respondents in that same poll feel that this govt. is doing a fine job when tens of millions are jobless, thousands have been locked up on flimsy or no charges, one thousand are dying every day of the virus, every institution has been subverted, the Chinese, Nepalese, Bangladeshis are showing us the finger every day? Why is it that a Bollywood actor's unfortunate and mysterious death is more newsworthy than continued rapes in UP, floods in Assam, lies about Ladakh, continuing arrests of academics and activists on trumped up charges, the motivated distortion of education policies and curricula, an economy which has contracted by 24% and is the worst performing of all major nations?  Why are we unable to sift the chaff from the grain?

                                              

   There could be two answers to this conundrum. The first, of course, is that I am biased, living in an ivory tower, do not have my finger on the pulse of the people in the same manner that Mr. Amit Shah has it pressed on our collective jugular, that I  am not particularly enamoured of a Prime Minister who is busy feeding peacocks when everything is crumbling around his flowing locks. This could well be true, though I did begin life as an enthusiastic supporter of Mr. Modi before I saw the light, or rather, the impending darkness. But there could also be a second, politically neutral answer provided by Thomas Jefferson many years ago: " The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads newspapers." ( Had he been unfortunate enough to be alive today, he would no doubt have also added TV and internet to newspapers). It appears to me that Jefferson has, as the blonde told her partner, put his finger on the spot: the problem today is precisely this- there is a surfeit of bilge floating around, masquerading as news, which suits the ruling dispensation fine.

  Where is the news today, the narration of facts, the discovery of governmental misdeeds, the exposure to differing perspectives, the cogent discussions which can help us to formulate our views? We may have 800 channels and one lakh publications, but they do not provide any news- what they generate is the clangor of clashing egos, trumpet blasts of fanatical dogmas, fountains of obsequious slime, truckloads of hatred and anger, and the occasional apoplectic writhings of an Arnab Goswami doing the "drug dance". With very few exceptions, what we get is opinions- of the basest kind- not news and facts. The resultant cacophony kills news as surely as Republic TV has killed journalism. The waters are so muddied by alternative facts, untruths, fake news that only the loudest can be heard, and who can possibly be louder than the likes of sold out anchors, self-seeking editors and the BJP's IT cell? All deliberately creating diversionary narratives to blank out the issues that matter.

  Consider the media's responses to just two recent events. The death of  Sushant Singh Rajput has been converted into a media-cum-judicial circus not seen before; there has been nothing else on TV for the last two months. At last count there were at least a dozen motives attributed for his death, limited only by the anchors' fetid imagination: paedophelia, rape, extortion, politics, nepotism, drugs, mental illness. Reputations and careers are being destroyed with little or no evidence, and every anchor has been indulging his/ her despicable voyeurism to the hilt. One channel even came up with a detailed forensic/ postmortem report based only on a photo of his hanging body! Another gave a list of seven reasons to prove it was murder, not suicide. Yet another anchor, known for his St. Vitus' dance on prime time, instantly announced a politician guilty in an attempt to serve his own sick psychosis. Everyone has an opinion on the case, except of course the Mumbai police. Not one word of rational discourse, or about the various crises facing the country today. But of course there was time enough to show the Prime Minister feeding peacocks! Thankfully, there was no panel discussion on this momentous event.

  The same happened with Ladakh. Our media would have us believe that we have given China a bloody nose, that the banning of 150 Apps is just recompense for the death of 20 Indian soldiers and occupation of hundreds of sq.kms of our territory, and that our PM's resolve has ensured that Xi is on his way out. The manufactured outrage of anchors whose faith in govt. handouts would have been touching if it was not so self serving and sickening, their steadfast refusal to present the facts to their audience/ readers, has lulled most Indians into believing that we have secured a great victory, and into swallowing the government's propaganda. This may prove costly for the country in the long run. Not that the Chinese are complaining- Xi is quite happy to have incurred the displeasure of our ethically disadvantaged anchors so long as they keep concealing the fact that his PLA continues to sit on thousands of sq. miles of Indian territory. Whose interest are these dissemblers serving?

   The root cause of this destruction of our media eco-system and replacing it with a propaganda framework is, of course, the government and the ruling party's spokespersons. The govt. over these last six years rarely shares the truth with its citizens- it is more comfortable with suppressing, distorting or denying it. It is ably assisted in this by the party's IT cell, its virulent spokespersons and of course, Facebook. If, in spite of this some journalist accesses the actual facts and the truth, he is summarily hauled to the nearest police station. Most news organisations have smelt the " kadha" and have fallen in line.

  Social media belongs to the ruling party, and the latest exposures relating to Facebook only confirm what was well known. The millions of fake accounts, the well trained trolls, the synchronised abuse of any sane voice ensures that only that is heard which the govt wants heard. Paradoxically, however, digital platforms provide also the only space  where one can hear some independent voices and a view contrary to what the govt. wants you to hear. The very few objective digital news portals- the WIRE, the CITIZEN, QUINT, HW NEWS- and individual analysts like Punya Prasun Bajpayi, Yogendra Yadav, Abhisar Sharma, Farzan Mustafa, Ashutosh, Praveen Sawhney, Colonel Ajai Shukla, etc. are the only sources from where the citizen can obtain some genuine news and insights. All the rest is a tower of Babel and the world of Goebbels.

   India is, of course, unfortunately an outlier when it comes to combating this kind of regimented and mercenary news eco-system. In every other progressive democracy civil society is challenging this new normal, forcing the governments to back off and compelling the digital gate-keepers to change the way they function, to stop the digitalisation of hatred and intolerance. The tech giants who monopolise news and social media are being grilled by legislative oversight committees and being forced to censor the posts of even Presidents and Prime Ministers. Corporates are being compelled to withdraw advertising revenues to these tech companies for hosting malcontent and hate speech: in recent days Adidas, Diageo, Ford, Honda, HP, Hershey's and Coca Cola among others have suspended their advertising on Facebook. And yet in India the govt. and the ruling party are SUPPORTING Facebook and coming out in defense of its partisan behaviour. Anchors are debating whether it leans to the left or the right. Experts are discussing whether what Cambridge Analytica did in 2019 was worse than what Facebook is doing now!  Efforts are being made by the BJP to remove Mr. Shashi Tharoor, MP, from the Chairmanship of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology because he wants to examine Facebook on this matter.

  It will be a long time before we can hear anything worthwhile on the 9 o'clock news, it would appear. But even this kind of inane journalism has its uses. I personally take some comfort from the prescient words of Oscar Wilde:

" By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community."

Finally, that sniveling India Today "opinion poll" of last month is beginning to make some sense!